MGA Grant-Writing Class Pays Off For New Jersey High School’s Special Project

Author: Sheron Smith
Posted: Monday, April 28, 2025 12:00 AM
Categories: Pressroom | School of Arts and Letters | Faculty/Staff | Students

Macon, GA

Ali Gely, inset, successfully wrote a grant for her MGA Grant Writing class that secured a $10,000 award for the Holocaust and Genocide Research Center at the New Jersey High School where she teaches. In the other image, from the New Jersey Herald, her friend and colleague Mary Houghtaling gives a tour of the center to the governor of New Jersey.

A grant-writing class paid off in a big way for Middle Georgia State University grad student Ali Gely and a Holocaust education project at the New Jersey High School where she teaches.

While working full-time at Kittatinny Regional High School in Hampton, N.J., Gely is an online student at Middle Georgia State (MGA) pursuing her master's in Technical & Professional Writing, as well as a graduate certificate in Technical Writing & Digital Communication.

This spring, she took the ENGL 6200 Grant Writing class from Dr. Monica Miller. Assigned the task of writing an actual grant application as her final project, Gely serendipitously learned that her friend and teacher colleague, Mary Houghtaling, had considered writing a Hipp Grant application for the Holocaust education project at the high school but felt overwhelmed by the prospect, likely due to the tedious, time-consuming nature of grant writing.

Gely offered to write the grant as her MGA final class project. And, in a result far more satisfying than simply getting a good grade, she secured a $10,000 grant.

The full name of the project benefiting from the grant is the Holocaust and Genocide Research Center, which was co-founded by Houghtaling as part of her own graduate studies at another institution. Hosted by Kittatinny High, the center is a tremendous source of instruction and information about the Holocaust and genocide and is apparently the only repository of its kind at a U.S. high school. The project drew the attention of New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, who recently toured the center.

In an email to MGA’s Miller, Gely said her friend Houghtaling “poured a lot of energy into acquiring resources and donations for the center, as its funding falls outside of the responsibility or capability of our general budget. When I enrolled in your Grant Writing course, it couldn't have aligned better.”

Read more about the center and the governor’s recent visit in this New Jersey Herald article.